


To Save a Soul

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam is out of the cage, Angst, M/M, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Adam is out of the cage, but he and the Winchesters are far from a happy family. Dean is more than willing to bear the weight of the guilt he carries for everything that's happened to Adam, and Belphegor is more than willing to use it to his advantage.





	To Save a Soul

**Author's Note:**

> So this popped into my head as I was torn over Supernatural's history of queer-baiting, and how the one episode they did with a pair of gay hunters feels more and more like a forced apology episode. So I was thinking of how the show could actually be more inclusive, then it got dark. So I'm not sure if this would be a step up or not, but here's my take.

_“How long was I down there?”_

_“About eleven years.”_

Two months, and nothing. 

Well, that wasn’t true. Dean knew it wasn’t true. He’d been out on more hunts in the last two weeks alone than he could count, and that was nothing to say of the last two months. 

But nothing useful had come in the last two months. 

Belphegor was still around. Cas wasn’t. He’d left a couple weeks after the Dean and Sam gave the demon a pass to stay. They needed him. And hell, Dean knew it sucked. He hated looking at that thing. It was using Jack’s body. It spoke in his voice. It slept in his room. But Cas didn’t have any high ground to stand on as far as Dean was concerned, not with what he’d known. 

_“And you left me there?”_

_“We didn’t have a choice.”_

_“Yes, you did.”_

That wasn’t even the worst of the last two months, though. While Belphegor was enjoying his freedom and implied protection of the Winchester brothers, they had discovered that the cage being opened didn’t just mean Michael was out. Adam was out too. And he was understandably more than a little pissed at Sam and Dean for having left him in the cage. 

Cas had been around then, though. He’d helped them to get Michael out of Adam’s body, just temporarily, and he’d carved the same Enochian symbols on the boy’s ribs that he had on Sam and Dean’s. He was untraceable as far as angels were concerned. 

Dean would’ve been surprised if Michael wanted Adam for a vessel anymore anyway. The boy was more than a little worse for wear. He had barely come out of his room in the last two months. Sam would take food to him, try to get him to talk. He never wanted to.

Dean couldn’t bring himself to face Adam. As much time as he had spent resenting the kid for having their father’s attention and affection when he and Sam hadn’t, he was still family. He was Dean’s little brother, and Dean had left in him in that goddamn cage for over a decade. 

When Adam did come out of his room on his own, it was to ask some question he’d spent a week or longer thinking about. It was usually directed at Dean. The boy probably knew the chain of command here by now. He knew Dean was responsible. Whatever happened, whatever anyone else did, it was Dean’s responsibility. And he shouldered the blame as stubbornly and strongly as his father had taught him to. 

_“Yeah, we did. We chose to keep Michael locked up, because he was too big of a risk.”_

_“Sam got out. And you’ve taken bigger risks before. Cas said—“_

_“Cas isn’t here.”_

Dean set another empty bottle beside the collection he’d started not he table, and went to the fridge for another. He twisted off the top and took a long drink, craving the numbness that never seemed to come anymore, no matter how deep into the bottle he let himself sink.

He went back to the book he had open on the table, blinking a few times to force his eyes to focus on the page. There had to be a way to fix this. Some way. Something.

“My offer still stands.” Dean made a disgusted face at the familiar sound of Jack’s voice. But it wasn’t Jack.

“I’m not interested,” Dean answered, flipping through another page of the lore. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for anymore. He’d been to hell. He knew there was no fix. Not aside from the wall Cas had offered to put up in Adam’s mind to block out the cage. He had been down there so much longer than Sam, and even Sam had barely survived coming back from it. But Adam had looked almost murderous when Dean had suggested it. 

_“You think you can fix this? You caused this.”_

_“I know, so let us help.”_

_“Help me by finding a way to bring them back.”_

It almost seemed as though Adam spent weeks at time finding a way to put together a few solid sentences, only to lash out, then hide away again in his room, alternating between tears and screams. Sam said he thought Adam was doing better. It took less than an hour now to calm him down from the night terrors, and he only hysterically demanded to see them, the ones the ghoul had killed, a couple times a day instead of screaming for them constantly. 

Dean couldn’t imagine how it could be considered better, but Sam knew more than he did in this area. 

“You know you can’t find a way to bring them back,” Belphegor said, leaning over the back of the chair across from Dean, his arms crossed on the chair back. “They’ve been dead for eleven years. Honestly, bringing them back after that long—their bodies will be _ripe,_ if you know what I’m saying.”

Dean ground his teeth together, glaring at the book in front of him without seeing the words. His head was swimming, and it was only half because of the alcohol. “I’m not torturing anyone.”

“Not anyone innocent,” Belphegor insisted. “Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t miss it. Just a little. Just a little torture, and I can fix this for you.”

“It’s not going to fix this. Nothing can fix this,” Dean snapped, finally tearing bloodshot eyes away from the book to shoot a deadly glare at the demon. He only smile in response, and for one cold moment, Dean wanted not just to kill him, but to tear him apart. To rip his throat out, tear him to bloody pieces. 

Something in his eyes must’ve given him away. Belphegor’s smile only widened.

_“I knew she was dead. When you brought me back, when I was in the cage. I knew. But it didn’t just kill her, did it? Is it true? Sam said—he said the ghoul killed someone else. Killed David.”_

_“Yeah. You knew him?”_

_“….God, why him? Was killing me and her not enough?”_

_“Sorry about your friend.”_

_“Fuck, just shut up.”_

_“What?”_

_“He wasn’t my friend. He was my boyfriend, and he didn’t deserve that.”_

If Adam had been torn apart and inconsolable when he thought only his mother was dead, it was nothing compared to this. Sam said it was because he’d grieved for his mother. He’d had time to process. To understand. But now he’d been told that his boyfriend had been dead for eleven years as well. Killed by that same ghoul—Hell, it had probably had Adam’s face when it killed him. Coroner had put the boy’s death at a couple days after Adam’s. 

The night terrors got worse. The screaming endless. He told Sam what he saw sometimes. That he’d see David in the cage with him. Him being tortured in place of Adam. Or Michael torturing him an Adam’s body. Dean had long since asked Sam to stop relaying whatever nightmares and horrific stories Adam told him. They didn’t help him trying to find a solution. Find a way to bring them back.

“If Cas can’t bring them back, why do you think you can?”

“I have connections,” Belphegor said. He dropped into the chair with a smirk. Dean knew this bait. He knew the hook and the line attached to it. But he was running short on other options. “Just one little torture session, and baby brother gets his boyfriend back and you all get to be a happy family.”

“What is your obsession with getting me to torture someone?”

“Not someone. A ghoul. _The_ ghoul that killed them. I’m doing you a favor, really,” Belphegor said. “Besides, I can’t pass up the opportunity to see you in action. You sir, are a legend downstairs.”

“You tell me where this ghoul is, I kill it, and you bring them both back.”

“No no no,” the demon said, his smile widening. “Killing it is too easy, where’s the fun in that? You torture this ghoul. And I bring back one. His mother or his boyfriend. Your choice.”

“Bring them both back or no deal,” Dean snapped.

“I don’t think you realize how this game is played, Dean,” Belphegor said, leaning forward. “I hold all the cards, so I make the rules. One tortured ghoul, one human back from the dead. That’s the deal.”

Sam would kill him for this. Cas would too. Hell, his mom and dad would probably find a way to kill him again as soon as he got to heaven. Or hell. Whichever. 

But this was his fault. His responsibility. His little brother, tortured in a cage with Michael for eleven years, only to get out and learn that the people he’d been closest to, who he’d cared about, loved, were dead. 

“Okay.”

—————

Dean would kill him when he found out. Probably torture him—wouldn’t that be a turn of events? Belphegor knew that. Just as well as he knew that he had no way to bring David back. If he’d been in hell, sure. But the boy’s soul was in heaven. Whatever connections Dean believed he had were fabricated, but Belphegor’s death would be worth it. 

To see Dean Winchester torture this ghoul, to start him on the path that would reawaken the cruel, cold-blooded man that had tortured souls in hell. 

Oh, it would be worth it. 

And it would be beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always loved and appreciated! :)


End file.
